| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: was in the Cevennes at Monastier, and during all my journey; but
there is a strict and local sense in which only this confused and
shaggy country at my feet has any title to the name, and in this
sense the peasantry employ the word. These are the Cevennes with
an emphasis: the Cevennes of the Cevennes. In that undecipherable
labyrinth of hills, a war of bandits, a war of wild beasts, raged
for two years between the Grand Monarch with all his troops and
marshals on the one hand, and a few thousand Protestant
mountaineers upon the other. A hundred and eighty years ago, the
Camisards held a station even on the Lozere, where I stood; they
had an organisation, arsenals, a military and religious hierarchy;
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War by Frederick A. Talbot: the full force of the explosion is distributed downwards and
laterally. Owing to the difficulty of ensuring the explosion of
the bomb at the exact height desired, it is also made to explode
upon impact so as to make doubly sure of its efficacy.
Firing timed bombs from aloft, however, is not free from
excitement and danger, as the experience of a French airman
demonstrates. His dirigible had been commanded to make a
night-raid upon a railway station which was a strategical
junction for the movement of the enemy's troops. Although the
hostile searchlights were active, the airship contrived to slip
between the spokes of light without being observed. By
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Princess by Alfred Tennyson: Of half this world, be swerved from right to save
A prince, a brother? a little will I yield.
Best so, perchance, for us, and well for you.
O hard, when love and duty clash! I fear
My conscience will not count me fleckless; yet--
Hear my conditions: promise (otherwise
You perish) as you came, to slip away
Today, tomorrow, soon: it shall be said,
These women were too barbarous, would not learn;
They fled, who might have shamed us: promise, all.'
What could we else, we promised each; and she,
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The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from New Arabian Nights by Robert Louis Stevenson: not to be beaten; and, with a little force, one of them flew open,
grazing, as it did so, the back of my hand. I remember, I put the
wound to my mouth, and stood for perhaps half a minute licking it
like a dog, and mechanically gazing behind me over the waste links
and the sea; and, in that space of time, my eye made note of a
large schooner yacht some miles to the north-east. Then I threw up
the window and climbed in.
I went over the house, and nothing can express my mystification.
There was no sign of disorder, but, on the contrary, the rooms were
unusually clean and pleasant. I found fires laid, ready for
lighting; three bedrooms prepared with a luxury quite foreign to
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